Padres first-round pick Donavan Tate suffered a broken jaw and facial lacerations in an ATV accident over the weekend. He’ll be dining exclusively on liquids for a while following surgery to insert a plate and wire his jaw shut. Hopefully he went big during Thanksgiving.
A high-school outfielder who was selected third overall in June and signed in August for a $3.5 million bonus, Tate was already rehabbing from October surgery to repair a sports hernia. The good news is that going ATV riding suggests the recovery from that surgery went well.
The bad news is that, as Bill Center of the San Diego Union Tribunenotes, Tate becomes the eighth Padres first-round pick this decade to “have had injury or personal troubles shortly after the draft.” Matt Bush obviously headlines that list, as the No. 1 overall pick from 2004 got into a bar fight before even making his pro debut and has since racked up an impressive list of incidents and injuries, but Tate is off to a pretty fast start himself.

Matt Bush was in San Diego recently and found himself getting into a fight with some high school kids for no real reason. When cops were called he shouted something to the effect of “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Matt (effing) Bush!” Let’s hope Tate doesn’t catch the self-destructive-jackass bug that seems to be in the First-Round-Pick water in San Diego.

Most teams also put in a little clause into their contracts that mentions “no motorcycles, hang-gliding, parachuting, base jumping, ATVs, snowmobiles, etc.” He better hope his contract doesn’t have those little words in it…